Pornografía infantil en internet

  May, 2003

Child pornography online: myth, fact, and social control 

Book Review
Robert Bauserman

Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography Online. By Philip Jenkins. New York: New York University Press, 2001, 253 pages. Hardcover, $22.95.

Few areas of sexual behavior arouse as much condemnation or as little critical thought as child sexual abuse, and child pornography (despite lack of a consensus definition) is often presented as the epitome of sexual abuse. Consequently, Jenkins’ book is valuable to those interested in issues of child and adolescent sexuality, sexual abuse, pornography, and sexuality on the Internet. Despite its flaws, no other comparable work exists that explores the online subculture of child pornography based on the thoughts and beliefs of the participants themselves, primarily as posted on message boards catering to individuals seeking to collect child pornography (CP) images.

Jenkins clearly states that CP images are exploitative and abusive, but manages to be (usually) calm and reasoned in discussing the nature and extent of the problem and possible responses. Jenkins is well qualified to take a levelheaded look at this online subculture. In his earlier book, Moral Panics, he documented how periods of extreme concern over sexual threats to children have occurred several times in 20th-century America, leading to exaggerated claims about prevalence and effects in order to advance social and moral agendas. Jenkins also writes that he recognizes the contradiction between his earlier exposure of such concerns as overblown, and his effort in this book to raise social concern about an authentic problem he believes is neglected.

In nine chapters, Jenkins focuses exclusively on online material of interest to men attracted to adolescent or pre-pubescent girls (he acknowledges the existence of a parallel group of men attracted to boys, but reports being unable to locate a parallel online culture for this group). As Jenkins explains, this material is almost impossible to find in other formats (such as magazines or films) due to severe legal penalties and the success of law enforcement in eradicating commercial production and trade. In his first chapter, he describes the hard-core nature of some of the child pornography available online, then lays out three goals in writing this book: (a) to present a critical case study of efforts to regulate Internet content; (b) to understand why society has such a distorted view of online threats to children, focused largely on “cyberstalking;” and (c) to examine the implications of the online child pornography subculture for theories of deviance.

The mere act of downloading a sexual image of an adolescent or child to view on a computer screen is illegal under federal law, regardless of whether the image is saved or transmitted to others. To avoid this problem, Jenkins’ primary source of information was written messages posted on web-based “bulletin boards,” where CP collectors discussed their activity and shared information but where illegal images did not appear. He also disabled the “autoload” feature of his Netscape browser, which meant photos on sites he visited would not automatically appear on his screen but instead be shown as small icons merely indicating a photo was present. Of course, this raises the question: How did Jenkins know that the sites actually contained CP if he did not view the images? His answer is that the collectors posting on the message boards quickly informed one another if sites did not actually contain child or adolescent images and commented on the content to each other. In effect, the collectors served as informants. Jenkins’ use of the messages of actual participants in an online sexual subculture is itself a useful contribution: It suggests a means for sexuality researchers to access writings and images from practitioners of many paraphilic and/or illegal forms of sexual behavior outside of clinical and legal settings.

In Chapter 2, Jenkins discusses the concept of child pornography itself and challenges a number of assumptions. For example, he notes that definitions of childhood and social acceptance of childhood sex play and even adult-minor sex have varied greatly in different societies. He also makes the thought-provoking observation that most people were “pedophiles” at one time in that, as children, they were sexually curious about other children. Jenkins also exposes the more hysterical claims surrounding the child pornography magazine and film business of the 1970s, prior to its criminalization. Far from a multibillion-dollar industry exploiting hundreds of thousands of children, it was at most a multimillion-dollar industry and was eliminated almost overnight in the United States by federal laws. However, early bulletin board systems–later followed by the World Wide Web and the advanced graphics it made possible–allowed CP to reemerge online.

All of this raises another question: Just how large a problem is online CP? The discredited Rimm study featured in Time magazine (later disavowed by Time, and panned by Jenkins as well) suggested an Internet filled with pornography sites just one or two keystrokes away. As is typically the case, this claim was exposed as an exaggeration. Jenkins admits that only the roughest of estimates is possible. Based on his observations of the different nicknames appearing on the discussion boards he investigated, he suggests that at most there are several thousand active participants on the “lolita” boards, with perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 regular “lurkers” who observe and collect images but do not participate in discussions. However, he offers no rationale for this estimate other than his own impressions. With current estimates of several hundred million people worldwide with Internet access, Jenkins’ estimate indicates that no more than a fraction of one percent of Internet users ever view such material.

Most of the CP images themselves appear to involve adolescents or children posing nude, which is not illegal in most Western countries. However, some hard-core images of adolescent and prepubescent children having sex with each other and with adults are available. While some appear to be recycled from 1970s magazines and films, other images seem to be “sex tourist” images created by men visiting Asian or Latin American countries in search of less risky sexual access to minors. Jenkins offers no estimate of the number of minors who currently appear in CP, but fortunately they seem to number far fewer than the tens or hundreds of thousands of children (defined to include adolescents) often claimed.

In Chapter 3, Jenkins details the organization of this subculture online, describing four institutions. First are the newsgroups now on Usenet, descendants of the old BBS services. Child pornography is found on only a few of the approximately 90,000 Usenet groups in existence (a point not emphasized by Jenkins, who identified barely a dozen “major” underage-oriented groups), and much of the posting on these groups consists of “spam” (come-ons for commercial sites, invariably featuring teens of legal age–18 and over–for pomography). Thus, barely 1 in 10,000 of the newsgroups serve as conduits for CP. Those that carry the most such material are most difficult to access, as many service providers block access to the groups that post the most illegal material.

A second major institution is storyboards, which post only text stories rather than pictures. Consequently, these sites operate legally. Third are interest groups on commercial servers, but Jenkins details how these groups are typically shut down quickly if service providers become aware of any trade in CP. Last are the web-based bulletin boards, the source of most of Jenkins’ material. These boards do not post illegal images, but serve as information exchanges where posters trade tips on security; discuss their “hobby” (their term), including ethics and rationales for their behavior; and tell others about websites where CP can be found and post passwords for accessing the material (such websites are typically short-lived encrypted sites that disappear after a few days, often recycling materials already posted elsewhere). It is on these bulletin boards, if anywhere, that the online pedophilia subculture maintains its existence.

In Chapters 4 and 5, Jenkins provides his most interesting and valuable material from a psychological and sociological standpoint. Here he discusses the structure of the online CP community and the different values or standards that participants advance to justify their activities, referring to the work of Best and Luckenbill, who categorized social deviants as loners, peers, colleagues, teams, or formal organizations. Classification depends on whether deviants associate with each other, participate in deviance together, or require a division of labor, and whether organizations’ activities extend over time and space. Although the model seems to work well for many types of deviants, from pickpockets to organized crime, Jenkins argues that online deviance may be an entirely new category that cannot be classified in these terms. CP collectors are loners in that their activities are solitary; offers to meet are met with derision (there is no way of telling if such offers come from law enforcement personnel). However, these loners also may actively participate in a virtual community where regular participants are well-known and even sought out for advice, tips and information are freely exchanged, participants create temporary websites to allow others to access collections of materials, and even abstract concerns such as the ethics of CP are debated. This level of interaction would place them as colleagues in the Best and Luckenbill model, but the critical dimension of interpersonal socialization is missing. The subculture maintains its unity solely through shared interest, not through face-to-face relationships or commercial exchange (pay sites are often scams or law enforcement fronts, and experienced community members place great emphasis on security, which precludes any possibility of using credit cards or real personal information online).

Also of interest is Jenkins’ finding that, like many other deviant groups (e.g., organized crime), the CP subculture does not represent a total break with conventional morality. This claim may be surprising, given the extent to which sexual interest in children or adolescents is socially and legally condemned. However, studies of deviant groups show that members may express mainstream or even conservative values on social and political issues, and share widely accepted goals such as material success. While subscribing to mainstream values, group members seek to rationalize or “neutralize” the illegal and socially condemned aspects of their behavior. Jenkins notes the use of techniques such as denial of victimization (the adolescent or child is said to be consenting), denial of harm, and condemnation of the condemners (e.g., as hypocrites). Users also self-label with nonderogatory terms such as “pedo” or “loli-lover.” Reports of truly sadistic and violent crimes against children (such as the Dutroux case in Belgium, in which an offender kidnapped, raped, and killed young girls) are met with expressions of disgust and anger and claims that “true loli-lovers” are interested in mutual pleasure, not violence. Jenkins considers such statements genuine expressions of feeling, not a public front, because of the private nature of the bulletin board forums.

Some participants justify their actions as VEDNE: “View Evil, Do No Evil.” These posters draw a strong distinction between looking and doing and assert that they would not actually sexually touch a child, an act they do view as harmful. Compulsion and consent are often topics of hot debate. Some posters display no concern for issues of consent; some fantasy stories are explicitly about rape of young children. Others, however, emphasize kids as willing and most posters express the belief that kids do consent to sex. Acceptable ages, however, are also debated, and a poster attracted to pubescent girls might vigorously condemn another interested in girls of 7 or 8. Jenkins concludes that participants’ references to their activities as a “hobby” might be considered the ultimate form of denial.

Chapters 6 and 7 present Jenkin’s view of the responses by law enforcement and private organizations to online CP. Arrests typically involve individuals who have stored illegal material that is accidentally discovered later on their hard drives or who have tried to solicit sex from minors in chat rooms. Law enforcement has also forged collaborations with some service providers, particularly America Online (AOL), to obtain information on posting and exchanging of apparently illegal materials. The subculture, however, generally avoids such obvious mistakes and expresses little serious concern about law enforcement. More frightening to board participants than any activities of law enforcement are the efforts of private groups. In some cases, service providers have quickly removed sites with apparently illegal content and threatened to provide law enforcement with IP addresses, activity logs, and even access logs (records of individual visitors) if necessary. Some hacker groups have organized to search out and attack online CP. Using programs such as “spiders” that search out URLs, file names, and passwords, and “trojans” that infiltrate sites and then lock up machines, transfer files, or even provide the hacker control of the operating system, hackers have shut down some discussion boards. These groups may be more feared and successful than law enforcement because of their ability to operate outside the law, but at the same time many of the hackers’ activities are themselves illegal.

In chapter 8, Jenkins details the global reach of the online CP subculture. The infrastructure of boards, newsgroups, and encrypted sites is able to survive by exploiting differences in legal and social attitudes of different countries. Many of the hard-core images, according to Jenkins, are the product of sex tourism to developing countries in Asia and Latin America. Many of the message boards themselves are based in Japan, or Russia and other Eastern European countries. A person posting a picture, the server, the picture site where other users can locate the image, and the site providing the password for access may all represent different legal jurisdictions. Also, international reactions, degree of cooperation, and resentment of American law enforcement authorities and their occasional heavy-handedness vary widely around the world.

In the final chapter, Jenkins presents his own ideas about possible ways to reduce CP online. He rejects increased government surveillance or controls on Internet access as both unacceptable in a democratic society and unworkable in any case. Instead, he believes the only effective response is to target the infrastructure of the subculture: the message boards and the newsgroups that distribute CP. Shutting down the boards would have to occur on a country-by-country basis, but could make such information progressively more difficult to access. As for the newsgroups, which have no physical location, Jenkins suggests working with online service providers to block access. The goal would not be the impossible one of eliminating CP, but rather drastically reducing the volume of trade.

Jenkins is sure to be more controversial in his ideas about reforming child pornography law, not because they are extreme or unreasonable, but because (as Jenkins himself notes) any apparent weakening of the laws is “politically intolerable.” Nevertheless, he offers several suggestions. First, he recommends lowering the legal age for appearing in sexual portrayals from 18 to 16 (which would be more in line with age of consent laws in most nations). He suggests that penalties could be set on a sliding scale, with diminishing penalties for higher ages; recommends that the law consider intent, which it currently does not do (leading to such ludicrous abuses as prosecuting parents for nude photos of babies or toddlers or prosecuting publishers of art photography books with nude minors); and suggests a journalistic exemption to the law, permitting access to or viewing of CP as part of legitimate news gathering. Jenkins argues that such changes could increase media attention and public concern and promote a social consensus by reducing the legal overkill that results in ambiguous or controversial prosecutions.

There are clear flaws in the book. Jenkins occasionally resorts to hyperbole of his own. For example, in chapter 1 he describes CP as “At its worst … a kind of visual heroin, dangerously addictive.” Fortunately, such panicky rhetoric is rare. Also, Jenkins offers no

persuasive rationale for his own estimates of the extent of CP and the number of collectors online (although he usefully debunks the typically exaggerated claims of the media). In Chapter 2, he engages in some unfortunate psychoanalyzing, characterizing pedophilia (and other forms of paraphilic sexuality such as sadomasochism) as “expressions of infantile sexuality” and “collector’s fetish” as a motivation for participants in the online subculture. Finally, he is simply mistaken in some of his claims about child pornography laws. In several locations, he states that pictures of nude children–or even of children in their underwear–are illegal under Federal law in the US. This is untrue. Nude photographs of children and adolescents are not illegal unless they show signs of sexual arousal (for example, a naked boy with an erection) or unless they focus on “lewd and lascivious” display of the genitals.

Despite these flaws, there is much of value in Jenkins’ work. He manages to discuss CP calmly, while at the same time making clear his personal revulsion, an achievement in itself in an area characterized by so much hysteria. His methodology points to a potentially valuable way to investigate online subcultures centered on many taboo or illegal forms of sexuality. His discussion of the infrastructure of the subculture and its global dispersion makes clear how efforts at control based on harsher penalties or wide-scale surveillance of the Internet will not reduce the problem but will violate the rights of hundreds of millions of users. His suggestions for legal reform appear likely to indeed reduce some of the most absurd “child pornography” prosecutions. His analysis of the moralities and justifications offered by the subculture members in their discussions among themselves provides useful insight into how members of this subculture view and justify their activities. There are few sources of information on child pornography that are truly useful to the sexuality researcher; this book, despite its flaws, is one of them.

Reviewed by Robert Bauserman, Ph.D., Towson University, 8000 York Road, Towson, MD 21252-0001, and Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 201 West Preston Street, Baltimore, MD 21201; e-mail: bausermanr@dhmh.state.md.us.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group